Secret Agent

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Will W Five stars for Madeleine Carroll, three stars for everyone else. It's not a bad film it just suffers by comparison with its predecessor as not as well written as 39 Steps and doesn't have Robert Donat. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 10/12/24 Full Review Matt D It's not completely bad. There's something to enjoy in every Hitchcock after 1934's The Man Who Knew Too Much Madeleine Carrol is as gorgeous and feisty as she was in The 39 Steps and Robert Young works well as the annoying fellow hotel guest. The plot has some good set pieces, particularly the lead up to the first assassination and the finale on the train. On the minus side, Gielgud may have been the supreme Shakespearian actor of his day but in this he is wooden and looks as if he's rather be doing something else than star as Hitchcock's second choice for the lead (he wanted Donat again). And unlike The 39 Steps there is absolutely no chemsitry between the two leads. In addition, Peter Lorre hams it up as an irritating hitman of indeterminate nationality. He would continue to earn his money playing foreign grotesques until The Maltese Falcon. Finally there's the plot. Having killed the wrong man, our heroes are now all reluctant to complete the task at hand. This may have looked fine in the script but in reality a spy caper where the spies aren't interested in finishing the job is oddly unengaging. Every one has bad days and this was one of Hitchcock's. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 08/01/24 Full Review Steve D Nothing special despite the talent. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/07/24 Full Review Josh G This film is full of elements that make later and earlier Hitchcock films pop, trains, the wrong man trope and decent recurring cast. But it feels like I've seen it before even though I haven't until now, weakest of the Hitchcock films. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 05/03/23 Full Review Dick C All my credits go to my favourite director, Alfred Hitchcock... Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/09/23 Full Review Audience Member This film's lack of focus and clumsiness is revealed in the very first scene, at what is supposed to be Ashenden's funeral. A one-armed vet politely receives the visitors, then, once alone, he VERY awkwardly (yes, he's one-armed, but still!) pulls the coffin onto the floor to reveal that it is empty. But if he knew it was empty, then why pull it down? Does he have a kinky thing about upending closed coffins to see what's inside? This scene lacks any of Hitchcock's stylish subtlety, and looks, along with rest of the film, cursory and rushed, like it was being cranked out quickly to satisfy the studio's wish to cash in on the success of 39 Steps and The Man Who Knew Too Much. The best actors from both of those hits were brought into this project, except Robert Donat cancelled due to health problems, and John Gielgud was his last-minute--and seriously inappropriate--replacement. The sparkle that Donat would have provided is totally absent in Shakespearean actor Gielgud, who is playing a sober stage Hamlet in the midst of scene-stealing movie actors. And Gielgud is tepidly unconvincing in his love scenes with sexy Madeleine Carroll--does this man ever get excited about anything? We are made to feel very badly about the wrong, decent, man getting killed, but then Lorre cancels our viewers' guilt by laughing his head off at the irony, and the film soon returns to the fun of finding and exterminating the real bad boy. Odd stuff. The 'clue' that leads the duo of assassins to their man is snatched out of thin air--Lorre randomly seduces a woman whose fiance 'just happens' to be the local contact communicating with the evil agent they're after. Really? Another sign that this was a rush job for quick profits and Hitchcock just didn't give a damn. Then there's the scene where Lorre inexplicably hands their dying murderous enemy his gun(!) and gets shot dead with it, apparently with the purpose of giving The General a chance to say his final goodbye to the audience. After all, Lorre has once again stolen Hitch's film, and deserves a proper sendoff. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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